Carefully Everywhere Descending
by The Amazing Maurice
Summary: (Calvin and Hobbes) The more things change, the more they stay the same. A ‘what if?’ fairytale; futurefic, pre-slash (complete). I don't know what came over me.


**Carefully** **Everywhere** **Descending**

Summary: (Calvin and Hobbes) The more things change, the more they stay the same. A 'what if?' fairytale; futurefic, pre-slash (complete).

Author's Notes: I just wrote angsty futurefic Calvin/Hobbes slash. I don't know what came over me, but I fully expect to be hit with a thunderbolt sometime soon. Aargh! I just kept wondering what would happen when Calvin grew up, and this happened.

Disclaimer: A thousand severe apologies to Bill Watterson. I promise never to do it again.

* * *

_"Have you seen how absorbed Calvin is with those Tinkertoys? He's creating whole worlds over there!"_

* * *

Mild-mannered Architect Calvin is hard at work in his plush twentieth-story office. No-one is aware that Calvin's true identity is— 

STUPENDOUS MAN! Champion of Liberty! Guardian of Justice! Wearer of little red underpants—

Wait...

...Calvin's true identity is in fact: SPACEMAN SPIFF! Galactic Explorer extraordinair! Foe of Alien Scum! Discoverer of... of...

Calvin is...

Mild-mannered architect Calvin is daydreaming in his dull grey office. He's twenty-four years old, and he's chewing on a stale ham sandwich from the vending machine while he goes over the plans for the new women's college. And that's it.

He can't imagine what made him think of Stupendous Man just now. Or Spaceman Spiff. He looks over the uninspiring blueprints again and wonders if he wasn't just missing his lucky rocketship underpants.

He takes another bite of his sandwich and grimaces. What he actually needs right now is something to wash this crap down with. He looks up at the clock and realises, what the fuck, it's lunchtime anyway and he's been here since eight o'clock. One stupid sandwich (which is probably teeming with salmonella or whatever

"_No, it's got raw eggs in it and you could get salmonella poisoning."_

_One more nostalgic part of childhood goes 'thbppth'_

anyway) isn't going to keep him going 'til five. So he yells to his secretary that he's going across the street to get some lunch. The blueprint isn't going to go anywhere.

Susie Derkins. The girl who lived down the street, whatever happened to her? They dated briefly in tenth grade, but mostly they were friends. He always meant to stay in touch with her, he's sure he's got her e-mail address _somewhere_, but he doesn't know whether she still uses the account or not, whether she got married, whether...

He shakes his head as he walks across the street to the Mugg & Bean stand on the corner. Why was he thinking of Susie Derkins? He hasn't seen her since College, four years ago now, and he already has a girlfriend right here in New York. She's called Leyla: she's a gorgeous blonde supermodel and _a vapid, self-serving fashion victim with all the empathy and staying power of a bar of soap._

He freezes as he gets to the head of the line and now he wants to know where the _hell_ that thought came from, except he can't just now because the guy behind the counter with the earrings and the acne scars is demanding "_Sir, your order?_" and he snaps out of it just long enough to get a large black coffee and a giant double-choc-chip muffin, and then he runs for his life.

He comes to in a quiet, leafy corner of Central Park; he looks at his order, and it occurs to him that he meant to get a half-fat decaf latte and a small salad. Christ, when did he turn into such a yuppie schmuck? He looks around at the twisting, craggy trees, and the soft earth and leafmould underfoot, and then up at the patches of sky visible through the canopy of green and red. He's so far in that he can barely hear the traffic over the gentle sussuration of the leaves.

Calvin remembers that he never, ever comes to Central park, because he's always too busy.

He sits on a cracked bench neaby, and takes a large bite of his muffin. It's warm and moist and chocolaty – when's the last time he had chocolate? It's the most delicious thing he's ever had that didn't come from home.

He has the sudden, inexplicable urge to call his mother.

He sits there a little longer, sipping his coffee and watching as two squirrels chase each other up and down and around and around the bole of a maple tree. The coffee is so good, bitter and rich, so strong he can feel the caffeine singing in his bloodstream already. He's almost full, and he isn't even halfway through the muffin yet. The sun is streaming through where the leaves will allow, and where they won't there is a soft green glow. The ground is a patchwork of light and shadows, dappled like a horse's flank. It's pleasantly warm.

Calvin is used to laughing when it's appropriate and expedient. Now he hears a crow croaking in a tree nearby, and smiles at the sound. A frog hops past his foot, pausing only to glare incuriously at his Gucci shoes, and he giggles at it.

He remembers when the woods were his personal domain, when he terrorized the neighborhood with T-Rex attacks. He remembers Saturdays that lasted from five in the morning to eight at night, of Summers that lasted forever, of...

... of a stuffed toy sitting in a dusty attic, out of sight and so, hopefully, out of mind, because Calvin had decided that he was far too old to have some teddy when he could have real friends instead, and that it was high time to stop living in his head.

He suddenly remembers that, these days, his mom talks about his childhood with a wistfulness that puzzled him.

He pulls his sleek Sony-Ericsson out of his Armani jacket pocket and calls his parents. As he listens to it ring, he absent-minddly pulls everything valuable out of his pockets and and arranges them all on the space next to him, by the half-empty coffee cup and the half-eaten muffin, and he shucks off his jacket and loosens his tie.

As he listens to the click of the phone being lifted out of its cradle, he toes off his loafers and his sensible grey socks.

He sandwiches the cellphone between his shoulder and his ear, and as he says, "Hi, mom, it's me," he bundles up the whole thing, jacket, shoes, socks, tie, PDA and all, and dumps them in the trash bin next to the bench.

"Calvin? What's wrong?"

Because if it's not Christmas, Thanksgiving, Mother's day or an emergency, he never phones home. It's September. He cringes in awful guilt.

"Mom, whatever happened to... to Hobbes?"

There's a pause on the other end, and the silence has a certain dumbfounded quality to it. Calvin takes another, jittery bite of his muffin, is calmed by the chocolate melting on his tongue, screw lovehandles, Jesus, he's twenty-four, he's in the best shape of his life, why should he care—

"Calvin, don't you remember?"

He tries to speak, but can't. She sighs.

"You dumped him in the trash the day you left for college, remember?"

"Oh," he says, in a very small voice.

"I'm sorry. Calvin, are you okay?"

"Yeah, mom." Then he adds, because it's been drilled into him, "Sorry for bothering you." He disconnects before she can say goodbye.

He finishes off the muffin with quick, nervous bites, and his still-warm coffee, and realises with a jolt that over an hour has passed.

He sinks back down, feeling the dirt shift between his toes and thinking very hard. He looks at his watch, and then, with a decisive air, takes it off and drops it in the trash as well. He's waiting. He's not sure what he's waiting for, but he's waiting.

If he looks really hard, he can see ants and millepedes on the treetrunks, a moth on this branch, a squirrel on that one, and more birds than he could possible count. It's so _nice _here.

His job doesn't matter, because it's a shitty job that he doesn't want. He doesn't want Leyla, and anyway, she's made it clear on several occassions that she could do better than him. He doesn't want all this stupid pointless _hassle_. He wants a forest to romp in, even if he has to refer to it as 'hiking' or even a 'nature walk'. He wants to draw and write stories and weird out kids, especially since he remembers how much kids _like_ being weirded out. He wants Hobbes. He wants Hobbes.

He spends a long time sitting there, with his hands between his knees and his blond hair dishevelled, hanging his head to hide his red, miserable face and runny eyes from the world, which is lush and beautiful and not his anymore.

Somebody sits down next to him and absent-mindedly passes him another muffin with one hand (blueberry this time), while with the other he holds the tuna salad sandwich that he's eating. He doesn't even look at Calvin, just eats his sandwich, sitting companionably close, with the cheerful air of someone who could happily stay here until the sun goes down. The park place is full of creeps and weirdos, but he isn't one. Calvin knows who he is, and hardly dares breathe for joy.

Between mouthfuls, the man says, "It's about time you showed up. If you'd taken any longer I would have come and dragged you here." He gives Calvin a familiar irritated, long-suffering look out of the corner of his eye.

He lapses backinto silence then, finishing the rest of his sandwich with ferocious gusto, licking the moyonnaise and escapee tuna off his fingers and lips and nose with his long red tongue.

Calvin just stares at him, dizzy and speechless with fear, too, because what if it's just a hallucination? Or, Christ, what if it _is_ real, what then?

"Are you going to eat that muffin?" Hobbes asks him.

Calvin is still staring, red-eyed.

Hobbes, with his human shape that is still somehow tigerish, smiles that small, wise, happy smile, plucks the muffin out of Calvin's nerveless grip and takes a big bite. "It's good," he says, spraying a few crumbs.

Calvin makes a tiny, strangled sound at the contact, and that's it, that's all he needs to know it's him; he buries his face in the shocking white-blond hair like he used to and almost cries with happiness when he feels the rumbling purr reverbrating through Hobbes' chest.

Around the bend in the track comes a woman in a t-shirt and sweatpants, clutching a mongoose to her breast; Calvin can see enough of her to see her face, to see the direct, approving look she casts at Hobbes, and then she is gone.

She saw him. That woman saw Hobbes. "You're real," Calvin says. "You're real, you're real, you're real."

"Of course I'm real," Hobbes says, kissing him. "And you can't throw me away again, ever."

Calvin walks home with Hobbes, in his bare feet, eating pieces of a very squashed blueberry muffin, pointing out stars in the darkening sky and discussing what will happen tomorrow.

* * *

_"Honestly! Would you please try to stay in the present?"_


End file.
